“Any of our victims,” I said, “not just Crystal. See what you can dig up. This is important.”
“Isn’t it always,” he said. “Meet me in parking at LAX about eleven this morning. I can give you whatever I got by then. My flight leaves at noon.”
He hung up.
I drove around in the predawn rain, feeding the cabbie money occasionally. I think I slept for a little bit. I had discovered over a lifetime of wandering that the back of cabs was one of my few safe places. I had an old sliver of a memory in my skull, in the places I seldom visited, never dwelled in. It was of Mom and Pa.
It was my last solid memory of life with my pa. He was driving us somewhere in that baby-shit-brown ’73 Buick Riviera. It was raining, like it was now, and I was stretched out in the backseat, mostly asleep. They were talking softly. Charlie Rich’s “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” was playing on the hissing AM radio, quietly competing with the rain on the roof and the hypnotic creak of the rushing wipers to be heard. They sang along, and I could hear, feel, the love between them.
I could smell Pa’s tobacco, sweet and musky. His death was not far away, out there just past the headlights in the onrushing future. It is my last memory of normal, of childhood, I retained, and it often tiptoed out of the ramshackle haunted house of my mind when I sat exhausted, safe in the backseat. What Elextra, Peggy, had said to me about feeling safe in the backseat of a car came back to me too. Normal people had scrapbooks; maybe broken people had the backseat of cars.
My phone buzzed and shocked me awake. I figured it would be Grinner, but it was a local number I didn’t immediately recognize. I answered. It was Gus Gilwaski, the erstwhile leader of the Weathermen.
“I’m sorry if I woke you, Laytham,” he said. I could hear Doris Day playing on vinyl in the background.
“No, no, Gus, it’s okay. I’m good. What’s up?”
“I did a divination as soon as I got home,” he said. “I wanted to get you the results as soon as possible. I hope they will help your investigation.”
“What you got for me, Gus?” I was surprised he had actually done it.
“Well,” the tyromancer said, “first of all, Crystal Myth herself is blocked from view by scrying. It’s powerful and old magic, probably related to her Fae heritage, maybe some kind of talisman or charm.” That made sense. Ankou had scoured the world for his daughter and had told me he had employed every resource, mundane or occult, at his disposal, including looking for her in the legendary revealing waters of Elphyne in the ancient Fae homeland. “However,” Gus continued, “I was able to get a read off of the young man who argued with Glide at the party we saw Crystal at. He’s with her now, and he has a strange dichotomy about him. He has been ally and nemesis to the now-late Roland Blue.”
None of this was knocking my socks off; however, the fact that the guy was still with her was helpful. Maybe Blue had put her on ice somewhere? Maybe the mystery man was one of Blue’s men and had decided to see if he could make his own deal with Ankou for Caern and had rabbited with her. If that was the case, what the hell was he waiting for? It had been years since she had vanished from L.A. Unknown guy’s presence just created more questions than answers.
“Thanks, Gus,” I said, “I really appreciate—”
“Wait,” he said, almost breathless, “I saved the best for last. I got an audible divination!”
“Oh,” I said, “okay … that’s … great, Gus, really.” Let me give you the 411 on tyromancy. It’s divination through the use of cheese. Yeah, sexy, right? There are many different styles of doing it. In Gus’s case, he viewed the formation of holes, of curds, of mold, as the cheese coagulated. Then finally he … inserted various parts of his body into the fermenting dairy product and listened to the sounds that produced. So “an audible response” … eww. Then I think, who am I to judge? What a man and his consenting cheese do in the privacy of their own home isn’t any of my damn business. Did I mention all Weathermen are kinda weird?
“It said, very clearly,” Gus said, as “Que Sera, Sera” played behind him, “‘Leucadia.’”
“‘Leucadia’?” I said. “Gus, what the fuck does that even mean?”
“Leucadia?” the back of the cab driver’s head said. “It’s down south, on the coast; it’s a less-developed section of Encinitas. A little over two hours from here. Nice place, Encinitas. Me and my buddies used to hit the beach down there in college to surf. It was mostly farms and some horse ranches back then.”
“No shit?” I asked.
“No shit,” the driver said without missing a beat. I could hear Gus’s grin over the line.
“I do good?” Gus asked.
“Gus, you did great,” I said. “I owe you one.”
“Wow, no kidding? Laytham Ballard owes me one.”
I chuckled.
“Got to run. Tell the boys next time I’m in town we will wreck it. Drinks on me.”
“Will do. Go get ’em, Laytham, but be careful. I … I saw some death coming. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Take care, Gus.” I hung up the phone. I slid another hundred to the driver.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Santos,” he said, “Jon Santos.” He took the bill without looking back.
“Encinitas, Santos?”
“It’s like five in the morning,” Santos said. “I’m off shift in an hour. My wife, Rose, she’s gonna kill me … but sure, why the hell not. This has been the most lucrative night of my career, so far, and you are definitely
